


Being stranger

by Mirgaxus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 06:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11076192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirgaxus/pseuds/Mirgaxus
Summary: He finds distraction in being a stranger, after he lost everyone who knew him as Remus. (Entry to introvert-club's fourth weekly prompt, "Ode to Strangers".)





	Being stranger

**Author's Note:**

> This is entry to introvert-club's fourth weekly prompt, "Ode to Strangers". Check out their tumblr, and fic collection here in AO3, there are many unique great fics produced already! The club posts a weekly open-for-all Wolfstar prompt every Saturday. Everyone is welcome to join, just be sure to tag the fic in tumbrl with "wolfstar introvert prompt", and/or add it to the collection here in AO3, so it can be seen by the club and everyone who are following the prompts :)

For those sweet, sweaty nights Remus never chose his own name. It was the one luxury he could afford with the strangers - the control over what he revealed and what he did not. The control over how he represented himself.

 

The control over who he was on those nights, and who he was not.

 

He could be John, he could be Anthony - fuck, once he had even been Jennifer, but that experimenting had taken more preparations than was reasonable when he was in the mood for a quick fuck. He could be a student, he could be a prostitute, he could be whatever the fuck he wanted to be, whatever he wanted to pretend for the few hours; and even if his pretending lacked credibility, even if he was too drunk and slipped up, the strangers were not that into digging up his secrets. Even in the face of most outrageous lies, they'd nod, they'd smile, thinking of only the mutual goal of fake intimacy for one night, that physical release before never seeing each other again.

 

With strangers, he could indulge in the fantasy of being whoever he wanted to be, and it was freeing. It was escapism in its purest form, it was about becoming one of the strangers himself. It was about shedding his own personality, his own history, his own traumas, and embracing for few hours the alternative universe - the what ifs, the what could have beens, the what he could have wanted if not-

 

With strangers, he could be whoever he wanted to be, but not _Remus_. Never _Remus_. Never Moony, never Rem, never Lupine, never Moonkins, never Moonpie, never Moonshine, nor any other ridiculous fucking nicknames that had been made by-

 

Never anything that could bring back the memories. Never anything that could painfully be said with the wrong accent in the wrong moment.

 

Never anything that could be even more painfully be said in just the right accent, in just the right kind of throaty groan, in just the right kind of moment, bringing back memories of all those other times when-

 

Hearing the groaned _'John' -_ so fake and so pretentious, so clearly an imitation from too many hours of watching bad porn - gave him excited goosebumps, gave him the thrill of doing something he was not supposed to. It was freeing in a way that his own name had ceased to be for a long time. _Remus_ was a name used by sad people, with sad faces, name used by mourning people who were watching him carefully, waiting for him to break down.

 

 _John_ , and _Anthony,_ and _Jennifer_ , and all the other fleeting strangers - they were names said in croaked smiles, with flirty voices, with groans, with the heated need.

 

Sometimes he worried about how _Remus_ had started to sound like a name of a stranger in his ears.

 

Or maybe, he was worried how little he was worried about it.

 

But it was too good, too comfortable, too easy to let go and forget. It was too easy to step out there and switch the old masks to the new ones, to blend in and become one of the strangers, when there were no unstrangers to drag him back and remind him of who he was supposed to be.


End file.
